


Rumours

by Souja



Series: They were kids that I once knew [2]
Category: BIRDMEN - 田辺イエロウ | Tanabe Yellow
Genre: Gen, General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 17:02:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17770754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Souja/pseuds/Souja
Summary: Samezu eats fries and considers missing classmates.





	Rumours

. **Rumours**.

  
\--  
_All that exposition that should've been done in the prologue._  
\--

 

Contrary to later evidence, listening was never particularly hard for Samezu Ayame. Despite this her friends' words kept slipping through mental bars, spirited away by the nebulous ambiance of Birdy’s Restaurant and the simple chatter of its patrons. She’d latch on for a moment, pry as much meaning as she could, but in the next her mind would wander.

And it didn’t help, the lack of sleep she suffered and the way it leeched at her energy till she could scarce find it in her to drink the fizzy juice she’d bought. It tasted less like a _‘Tropical~ Paradise~’_ as advertised and more like an oversweet orange. She tried, once more, to focus on her friend and put meaning to the pantomime words she made.

 _"Ya think Sagisawa's dead?_ "

Juice jutted out of Ayame's nose, staining her coat with dark patches where it landed. For a minute she closed her eyes, trying in vain to pedal back and pick up context. Hadn’t they just been talking about math? The hellish test Saotome-sensei had wrought on them all? 

When she opened them Sarutobi’s gaze worried over her with a napkin at hand and both eyebrows raised as if to say 'are you alright?' And then she said it out loud, with a touch of seriousness that was becoming too familiar a visitor on a face more prone to mischievous grins. "' _Yame_ ," she chastised softly, her mouth quirking awkwardly around the syllables, "Be more careful. Coulda' gotten on our notes."

Ayame managed a quick apology with the cloth obscuring her face, coughing straggling liquid from her lungs. Then, when the words rang in her ears, she "Pardon?"-ed and tried to bury her face in the fabric of the napkin.   

It barely helped the insufferable burn on her cheeks. A couple to their left sent baleful glares, all of which bounced from Sarutobi and landed on the orange tiled floor. Ayame blushed anyway.

Sarutobi hummed her attention back to her, eyebrows knitted together and the rest of the napkins suspiciously shifted to Ayame’s portion of the table. "You know, Sagisawa?" she paused, thinking as condensation dribbled down her cup, "He was one of the runaways. I think Yuu liked him?"

There...there was too much to tackle there at once. Ayame coughed the remaining drink from her lungs, words stuck in a mental blue-screen. "I don't think so?" she answered in the most intelligent squeak she could muster. Gee Ayame, 10 out of 10.

It seemed enough, though, and an appeased Sarutobi hummed around her straw, blowing into her dark drink. Brown froth hurried to the edge of the glass and tipped over in a bubbly waterfall. A painted fingernail hovered on the rim of the cup where a sticky brown film collected. "My cousin said there’s not much time left in the _crit_."

Ayame blinked. What an awful sounding word.

"Critical period," Sarutobi supplied. Her hand swept over an invisible piece of lint, flicking it off and away. "Says the chances of finding them after this are-- ‘ _flippin’ awful’._ " A shrug accompanied the imitation, as if it was weather smalltalk. _Looks like it'll rain tonight, and also did you know our ex-classmate might be dead? Crazy how the world works, isn't it._ "You wanna get some fries? I'm starving."

Music filtered down in place of silence, something soft and poppy that Ayame appreciated with her head in a mental stop. _Too fast._ The conversation moved too fast.

"You can't just _change topics_ like that," Ayame muttered, though mostly to herself. More danced on the tip of her tongue--How had they come to it? Had her cousin mentioned anything else about the case?-- But her stomach protested, loudly, and Ayame felt her nose wrinkle. Instead she sighed and forced her face to her hands. "I'll split with you."

"Bitchin'. Be right back."

Which left Ayame in the company of textbooks and drinks, and a bundle of uncomfortable things she hadn't particularly pondered. She blew bubbles into her drink, listening as the song faded and was replaced by the ' _Hey, Birdman-san!!'_ tune that’d been making rounds. She hummed along, _Tori-ko to--_ , and allowed herself to think.

October was just around the corner, the outside leaves already beginning to turn. When it was quiet, like this, it didn't feel like time had passed. She panned around the Birdy's restaurant, her eyes trailing over the unchanged sight of patrons and waitstaff alike. Well, as quiet as it got, anyway.  

Sometimes. Sometimes it felt like the world had moved on in absence of Sagisawa Rei and the rest, as it had with the disappearance of Takayama Sou. As if they hadn't really mattered or existed at all, imaginary beings known only better from missing person posters and empty seats with names attached to them than any sort of human interaction. And it was silly, she knew, but it sometimes felt they hadn't existed before then, like placeholder faces and bodies that moved and talked but didn't really...belong. 

Because the seat closest to the window remained conspicuously vacant, and the other nearest the door remained Takayama's in name but mostly functioned as Hasegawa's personal bag holder. Even Miyamoto-sensei's complaints dwindled as the year progressed. The only thing the teacher managed these days were dull rebukes about keeping his stuff in order. Maybe in a month or two someone’s shoes would take the window spot, and Karasuma would disappear altogether.

She laughed, a little, but something about that felt really lonely.

A flicker of their school’s trademark blue caught her eye and Ayame looked up. Sarutobi had returned, bearing gifts of potato and seasoning.

"I come with garlic fries because I love you," Sarutobi said. There was a clink as ceramic met the wood table, followed by a heavy _fwump_ as she sat. "And because someone messed up, I guess. Free upgrade though! Sauce?"

Ayame nodded her thanks, hungrily swiping one for herself. She raised a fry to her lips--

“But don’t you think it’s freaky?” followed by the slightest clenching of fists. “Sagisawa and the rest, I mean.”

\--and set it back down. Words bubbled in her stomach, responses to conversations she hadn’t been a part of, but had permeated  _everything_ for those first few days after _The Announcement_.

“I don’t know if they had a choice in it,” She echoed. A pause wrinkled her nose as she searched for the right phrase. She found none. Or, rather, found too many. 

 _Persuaded_ was the word used most often. Convinced to leave by an outside party. Which wasn’t exactly a comforting thought, that someone would be targeting them. Kids their age, kids in their _classes_. It was too close to home, even if stray whispers from teachers claimed it happened more frequently than went reported. Some folks seemed rather unbothered by it, as if somehow ascertained it was a one-time occurrence.

That had happened twice already. Alright, sirs.

“Still.” Sarutobi urged. Her voice cracked on the syllable. “It’s _weird_.” Distress messied the edges of her lips to a frown, a small ‘o’ punctuating a million unsaid words. But as quickly as it came, it was replaced by a thin line, a sliver of potato poking out like a reptilian tongue.

“It is,” Ayame conceded, thick. She suppressed the urge to look over her shoulder, suddenly feeling like every pair of eyes were simultaneously burning holes into the back of her chair.

For a minute, neither said a word. A heavy nervousness settled into the extra seats, a terrible, murky thing that masqueraded as a problem easily solved. It glittered with patchwork assurances, grinned ‘ _We’ll find them_ ’s and half-sure ‘ _It’ll be alright’_ s that seemed less convincing every time they were echoed in place of an answer.

“You hear what the basketball team said?”

And just like that the feeling was ignored, hidden an arms length away.

Ayame blinked, moving forward at the sound of gossip. “What?”

Tension filed out of Sarutobi’s shoulders as her tone dropped to a conspiratory lull, “Hasegawa says it was one of Kamoda’s gangs.”

She gasped, “3-D’s Kamoda?” and felt her heartbeat skyrocket. She’d _heard_ about him.

A rapid nod, as if the information needed to be shared. “Apparently, he got into it with some kids from Sannouji.”

_“No.”_

_“Yes.”_

“But--but Sagisawa…?”

Sarutobi stared. “I heard they were friends.” she pushed up on her elbows, disregarding the mess they’d made of the table. Her grin tightroped between unkind and teasing now that the topic was all _hypotheticals_ and the people in question absent to say otherwise. “Betcha he’s still alive though. I heard his family’s loaded. That's the kind of dough that keeps you _kicking_.”

The song changed once more as Sarutobi continued spinning theories, coming full circle with an answer to her own question. A guy two booths down made a beeline for the bathroom. Another fry disappeared from the plate. Ayame’s stomach crawled, but she listened anyway.

 

...


End file.
